PRL Serials

On the Road…

Alia stands in a vast darkness and Darker is next to her. They are wearing skintight, white suits up to their necks and they can see one another but nothing else. This is the condition that they exist in for an unknown amount of time; maybe they had just passed through the shining gate, or maybe they had come to this darkness ages ago and been slowly gaining their bearing. Alia doesn’t believe that they have been in the darkness for very long. She recognizes that this place where she finds herself is not a reality that she has ever experienced before. Something about it is so dark, so absolute that it warps her perception of reality, and if not for the white suits, she wonders if she and Darker will bleed into the darkness. 

There is no reason to think of that, they are not losing themselves, only stunned and then Alia looks up for the first time to realize that they are deep down in a pit, so far down that there is no evidence that there is an upper limit. But Alia is slowly regaining herself and her instincts tell her that she must go up to free herself from the absolute darkness. She tries to fly the way that she has up to this point, but thoughts of weightlessness do nothing. She wants to panic, she wants to feel trapped and really bad for leading Darker into this pit, but then she realizes that if this is the Road, then she must use the colors that she has collected. Each color had coincided with a negative emotion that she had to conquer and the yellow planet had exhibited fear when it fled from her as she approached it, so she thinks of the yellow, how she overcame and her white suit turns yellow and she begins to levitate. As she does, the full spectrum of the colors of the rainbow explode directly up from her head in a flurry of glittering sparks. As the sparks dissipate, she is wowed by the vertical plane of rainbow colors that must stretch all the way up to the entrance of the pit. She grabs Darker’s hand that is covered in white in her own yellow hand, and then she reaches her other hand up and touches the flat plane of rainbow colors. When she connects, she feels it pulling her and she lets it as they slide along the colors with the darkness at their backs. They move at an incredibly fast pace, but the journey out of the pit is long. As they approach the surface, a circle of ominous light grows larger above them. The light seems to be faint and mostly red where the rainbow plane doesn’t slice through it and when she reaches it, the rainbow disappears, and she and Darker are in a place that looks a lot like hell. There are creatures that appear to be demons dragging and torturing souls, and Alia can feel their pain, their utter despair and lack of hope; her feelings at the bottom of the dark pit pale in comparison to the lack of hope in this place.

“Why are we in hell?” Darker asks and his voice gets the attention of a pack of demons who see the two of them standing in the middle of miserable chaos, and then the demons run at them with their horns and various sharp or spikey weapons. 

Alia sees them and for a moment she is locked in utter despair and she wants to crumble into a pile to mourn for the souls around her, but then she remembers the sadness, the despair she had overcome as the wave of extremely sad men blanketed the Dreamscape, and she mustered the courage she showed there. When the demons are close and eager to drive their spikes and sharp weapons into them, Alia’s suit flashes blue and indigo and she wields a violet sword that she swings to decapitate at least two of them. The others are relentless and as more demons notice Alia’s slaughter of their brethren, more come to help subdue her. When she and Darker are overrun with demons, the flat plane of rainbow colors explodes above her and blows the horde back, and Alia stands fiercely at the center of the circle of demon bodies. She touches the rainbow above her as she grabs Darker around his waist and they take off in a flash.

When Alia touches the rainbow that explodes above her, she and Darker are suddenly standing on a large road streaked with the colors of the rainbow. The road snakes very far ahead of them through a sea of what seems to be very bright stars and it is extremely beautiful to stand there. When she and Darker first appeared there after she touched the rainbow at the bottom of the pit, they both ran on the road in the direction before them, but when Alia thought they were making no progress and tried to fly, they tumbled off the road and they were back in the hellish environment. After she defeats the horde of demons, she and Darker know better than to attempt flying the road and they run as far as they can for as long as they can. They are not in bodies that get physically tired, but the length of the road is exhausting in it’s monotony and when they stop making forward momentum, they tumble from the road to find themselves in a different part of the hellish reality. 

They fall onto a rocky cliff and when Alia looks down, she recognizes the distant commotion that they had left where she killed many demons and she is heartened that they are making progress.

Through hell and heaven, Alia thinks to herself, it’s a road through hell and into heaven. She wonders what heaven will be like and then she focuses to try and summon the rainbow again.

“They can fly,” Darker says with obvious fear in his voice.

“Lucky,” she says. It would be so much easier to be able to fly, but then she’s knows jealousy will keep her bitter in place, and suddenly her suit is green, but before the rainbow can manifest over her head, she feels something smash into her and then there is a chaos of crumbling rock as she tumbles down. She has lost sight of Darker, but she grabs onto something, a ledge, and pulls herself up. Everything is dark, but there is a sinister light, a dim eerie glow, to everything and the red of the cavernous, rocky surroundings makes it hard to see and judge distance. But then a horde of flying demons passes and they have Darker, who is yelling uncontrollably and calling for Alia. Alia jumps at the horde and screams as she sails through the air. When she lands on one of them, she bashes at the demons with her fists, and grabs them and tosses them off. She grabs Darker and then she jumps by pushing off the back of one of the demons, and then the rainbow manifests and Alia touches just as a new horde of demons descend on them. 

When they hit the road, they are further back than she remembers they were the last time and it dawns on her that falling down in the hell reality, sets her back on the road. She curses as she and Darker run, concentrating on the road ahead. 

Meanwhile, Alia’s other half in the physical realm…

The journey to meet the being SoEl in the physical world goes smoothly as Alia and Kazi Fandral enter the Banned Regions and fly fast toward the uncharted territory just beyond the asteroid field. As they near the outer limits of the Regions, the rocky bodies become more scarce and Alia is humbled by the vastness of it all. Their ship is a speck in this great cosmos and it seems that no matter how far she travels, she will always be inside of it, a part of it, dependent on it. 

She watches the Regions from the large front window of the ship with a view enhanced by technology in the window and the video feed of the high powered cameras that chart the ship’s positions. She can see individuals and groups moving about the rocky bodies, or living lives in large domed cities and she wonders what things are like there. She hopes that they are happy and free of worry, but the chances of that are low. There is always chaos, always trouble stirring somewhere.

Just as Alia is beginning to allow herself to feel optimistic that she is on the right track, a warning message begins to sound and then an outside message is dispatched through the intercom system.

“Your ship is passing through toll-space,” a voice exclaims angrily over the speakers of Fandral’s ship. “You will be escorted to the nearest toll booth to pay the necessary toll plus a hefty fine for trying to avoid payment. Failure to comply will result in an attack on your ship. Please comply.”

Fandral looks angry as two ships fly next to theirs and aim weapons at them, but he follows them reluctantly to land on a relatively small floating rock, that is still large enough for all of the ships. A fourth arrives just as they land, and when Alia and Fandral leave their ship, two Druintes exit the last ship to land. The Druintes speak first, confirming that the communication technology of their suits is compatible with their own. 

“My name is God,” the shorter of the two introduces erimself. “This is Pegraf, and we wanted to personally greet a Kazi of Eel. We do not get many visitors out this way. I have heard things about the Kazi, that you all are magical, is that true?”

“What kind is name is God?” Alia asks. “You think that highly of yourself?”

“I’m not sure I understand your question,” God responds. “I am called the name that was given to me.”

“Enough of this,” Fandral interrupts, “we don’t have time for introductions. What is this nonsense? What is toll-space?”

“Well,” Pegraf, the other of the Druintes explains, “when God and I arrived to the Regions and were looking for a safe place to make our home, we realized that we would have to make it safe. God has worked hard, shed blood to keep us safe, and this part of the Banned Regions is safer than the Safe Zone. Because God fought so hard for that safety, and sacrificed so much of erimself to ensure civility here, e asks those who pass through to contribute to eris continued effort.”

“It is also my way of meeting all newcomers who pass through,” God says. “Just to make sure that no one is bringing trouble. So how would you all like to pay the toll? We take currencies from all IP represented cultures, or precious metals, shipparts, but no credit of any kind.”

“This is preposterous,” Fandral starts.

God removes the helmet of eris suit and Fandral and Alia startle, both at the notion of erim exposing erimself to the void of space, and then at the horrible scars that cover eris face and down to eris neck. E replaces the helmet.

“My sacrifice is clear,” e says, “will you disrespect that?”

Alia and Fandral look to one another.